Errol, very jealous you met her, I think I'd have been speechless (PhD in biochemistry here, but studied in Oxford so quite a few pictures of her about the place). Interestingly she probably was the first woman to receive maternity pay in the UK.

Rosalind Franklin is mainly known because of the hatchet job Jim Watson did on her in his book, but yes, Brenda Maddox's biography of her was everywhere a few years ago but I had to seek out one about Dorothy Hodgkins.

That timeline is scary. I remember learning in my law degree that rape within marriage had only recently been criminalised (studying at the end of the 90s) and being shocked to my core. The idea that, through most of my life, if I had married I was deemed to have consented to my husband having sex whenever and whatever my views, was really shocking to me.

Ah - my mistake, I'd got a US document, they were a few years ahead of us (but not that many).

It really is surprising... presumably credit cards were different to credit agreements as such. It certainly never dawned on me when I got my first car loan in about 1985 that so few years earlier this might have been a problem, and I'd have been totally outraged if I'd had to get my dad or fiancé to sign the agreement.

Penguins - I remember the newspaper debates about making rape in marriage illegal. A lot of people thought it was a ridiculous notion. So the cases getting trotted out to support the new law were women who had actually left their Husbands, but not divorced yet, and their Husband raped them.

And I remember in the 1990's a friend wanting a loan for a business. Every bank she went to, except Barclays, insisted her loan application was counter signed by her Husband. So may have been legal to get credit, getting it was another issue.